The average computer user might think that the number of languages their operating system supports is pretty long. OSX supports 22 languages, and Microsoft claims to support 96, but they're counting different regional dialects multiple times. But there are over 6000 languages, and though many of them are spoken by a dwindling few, there are some languages that are spoken by millions of people that are supported very poorly, if at all, by computer operating systems. The reason for the support being poor is that the people who speak those languages are poor, and are not good "markets." It's only because of the efforts of a few dedicated people that computing support for languages such as Burmese, Sinhalese, Pali, Cambodian, and Lao have been as good as they are, but the trends for the future are not good.

Yes, but you can use any of those representations for 'q' and people will know it is the same letter.

This happens to work in English.

The original post made it sound like slightly altering the rendering changed the meaning.

Exactly, in some languages it does. Imagine if software were to slightly alter each 'e' into 'c', which after all looks quite close. Imagine the confusion if this sort of error were common.

My attempt was to get you to understand by using a familiar analogy. Consider the difficulty of describing how to form the various glyphs, and the large number of such glyphs, needed for English cursive writing.

Do I expect some vendor to support my personal script, no. Do they support a language almost identical and fully readable, yes. Heck, I don't even like my script, I just cannot hand write as cleanly and quickly as a computer can render.

Your personal way of rendering the letters when you write, your style if you will, is not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about the glyphs you use, or anyone uses, when writing cursive script. In order for a computer to represent cursive script it must know about all of the variations that we all use as a natural part of cursive writing. This is important as an aid to your understanding of the problem: Some languages do not have a non-cursive form and may in fact load grammatically critical information in to the bits and pieces between letters.

This discussion isn't about writing words to look pretty or conform to some sense of artistic style. It is about being able to render a language so that it can be written/read by somebody who knows the language.

Yes it is, and I kept my comments firmly on that footing. I am not talking about stylistic variations, although it should be noted that these ought to be supported. If that's what you took from my comments you're harder to reach than I thought.